


This Angry Heart

by Rainey657



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 19:23:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15444093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainey657/pseuds/Rainey657
Summary: Season Three ended with Detective Chloe Decker saying the words “It’s true! It’s all true!” and one baffled Devil who failed to realize he’d been outed by his own body.Our Detective might have done any number of things in response. Her dominate paradigm was upended. Her reality was lying in 10 million pieces on the floor. Her partner, one Lucifer Morningstar (not the son of Larry Morningstar, a plumber from Cleveland) was the literal, real Devil. Satan. Prince of Darkness......and the man she loved.What is a good cop to do in a situation like this?Here’s my take on what happened…





	This Angry Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and gratitude to Neil Gaiman, Mike Carey and DC Comics, creators of the illustrated Lucifer. And to Warner Brothers and the cast and crew of Lucifer, the television series, for the joy they've brought us.

Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped her car keys and spent a good 10 minutes crawling around on the superheated Las Vegas asphalt before locating them. She practiced the deep-breathing exercises she'd learned in the academy so many years before – slow inhale for a count of seven, hold for another seven, and expel on a third seven. Repeat.

After multiple sets, the shaking subsided. A little.

But now she was sweating in the desert heat. Nighttime, you'd think it'd cool off, but the entire southern half of the state was in a record-breaking heat wave. “Hellish,” the weatherman had described it. If he'd only known.

She was sure her make-up had melted off her face... did it look like _his_ face, with dark red scars forming a topographical map of hell?

No, nothing could make _any_ human look like he did. No living being could survive those burns. But  he _was_ living. He was more than human, and one weak, pathetic human had torn him apart and left him shattered and broken.

_She_ had. _She_ had done it with a few... no, not _careless_ words. Terror. Raw panic. “Reflexes,” as Linda had said. Perfectly normal human reaction to the impossible. The mind can't process the information and shuts down in self-defense. She'd researched it.

Tell _him_ that.

She had come running back from the rooftop where he'd left her and gone to end the murderous career of one Marcus Pierce, LAPD lieutenant and almost her husband. Lucifer's back had been to her when she'd entered the room; but the being that turned and said “Detective?” in his voice wasn't her Lucifer. It was wearing his suit, but what she saw was a burned, horrifying monster, not the man she'd come to rely on, to trust and, finally, to....

Linda told her to forgive herself, to accept that a moment's unguarded reflex was beyond all but superhuman control and it was on Lucifer to learn that most humans simply had no experience with things that couldn't exist. _Shouldn't_ exist.

  


  


She'd appeared at Linda's office the following morning, waiting in the entry until her current patient was done and tapping almost inaudibly on the door. What Linda had seen when Chloe Decker stumbled in was almost unrecognizable as the friend she'd shared life histories with over drinks, followed by an old-fashioned bar-destroying brawl. The detective's hair hadn't been brushed after a night spent alternately sobbing and screaming into a pillow. What remained of yesterday's make-up was smeared, her eyes were red and sunken, her clothes had been slept in and she was trembling.

Linda had leaped to her feet, guided Chloe to the couch and taken her into her arms. If asked, Chloe Decker would have sworn she had no more tears left.

She would have been wrong.

Eventually, Linda brought her a glass of water and took a seat so she could look the detective in the eye. “He showed you, didn't he?”

“He didn't mean to. I don't think he knew he'd... changed. That his face was so heavily scarred and burned.

“Linda, I didn't handle it well.”

She blew her nose and added yet another soggy Kleenex to the pile. “I fucked up, Linda. It's all on me. I blew it _bad_. Lucifer has done nothing but be good to me... did you know he saved my life once?”

Linda wondered how much she should tell the Detective, and decided their adventure in the hospital was a story best saved for another time. “Yes, he told me a bit about it.

“What happened, Chloe?”

Marcus. The threats. Charlotte's murder. That... was it a museum? Their lieutenant drew down on them before Chloe could get her own gun out. Lucifer stepped in front of her, she moved past him, Marcus fired...

“I was wearing a vest, so it just knocked the wind out of me...

_...probably stopped your heart for a few seconds, too_ , Linda thought.

“... I fell backwards into Lucifer, he grabbed me and... and...”

Linda refilled the glass. “Take your time. Deep breaths.”

“Gunfire. I heard shots; more than 20. Lucifer was holding me and screaming. It felt like he flinched with every shot, but... that would have _killed_ him. And some of those bullets would have hit _me,_ right?”

Linda nodded.

“I thought... there was white around us, like... I dunno, _feathers?_ ”

Linda hummed an affirmative, and wondered exactly how much about her patient she should reveal. And why hadn't _he_ called her? This sounded like a massive trauma for both of them.

“I must have passed out again; next thing I knew, we were on the roof of another building. I think he ran downstairs with me, out the door and down the street... no, wait. That can't be right.”

Dr. Martin decided to cancel the rest of her appointments for the day. “You have a lot to process right there, Chloe. Want some free psychiatric advice? Think over what you've just told me, the sequence of events. See what explanation fits each of them, and make sure all the explanations agree with each other.

“And stop punishing yourself for being human. Highly charged situation? Highly charged response.”

Linda rose from her chair and opened a desk drawer, removing a bottle of Kraken rum and two glasses. “I do not approve of drinking in the morning,” she announced, pouring them each a double. “But, somewhere, it's 5 pm. _To hell with it!_ ”

It was an indicator of the detective's misery that the rum made it all the way down her throat before Linda's remark sank in. Otherwise, the alcohol would have made a detour into her lungs via a bout of nearly hysterical laughter.

The two women clinked glasses in a salute to the gods of irony.

“Humans are prepared to encounter alien beings from another world,” Linda said. “We might even be able to cope if the intelligence on that star ship looked like slime.

“We have popular TV shows about the lives of fairytale characters and medieval warriors riding dragons. But, Chloe, we don't expect to be hit with the fact that someone we _know_ , someone whose life we're deeply invested in is a _goddamn comic book character!!_

“And that everything in that comic book is horribly real!”

Linda leaned forward and took Chloe's hands in hers. “Lucifer showed me who he was a couple of years ago. I like to think I'm a rational person, well-grounded in reality, but for a few days after I saw that burned face I really believed I was going to lose my mind.

“But I always _always_ remembered that's he's Lucifer _first_ and the Devil second. It's just a job, Chloe, like being a homicide detective.”

Linda smiled and handed her friend a Kleenex. “Now. I think we both need to start the day off with another shot and decide what we're going to do about our friend.”

  
**************

  


“I don't usually come in on Mondays, so there won't be a crowd – _ugh_ , that was bragging. Sorry.” 'Candy' was far more talented that Chloe had thought. She and her husband (not Lucifer, fortunately) owned a small club just off the Strip, where she sang on weekends and managed the bar Monday through Thursday. Her impromptu marriage to Lucifer had set her own wedding plans back by several months, but the paycheck made it a worthwhile delay.

In the two weeks since Lucifer Morningstar had outed himself to the detective, the Devil had virtually disappeared off the face of the Earth. Chloe was terrified that he'd fled back to... well, _home_ , and Dan had volunteered to put out a BOLO (copspeak meaning Be On the LookOut for) on him. With Maze remaining _incommunicado_ , she was about to take her ex-husband up on his offer when there was a knock on her door one evening.

_...please, please... dad, let that be lucifer..._

But the person on her front walk was a familiar blonde woman. A man in a wheelchair was beside her.

“Hi, Chloe. We met down at the station last year. I'm Candy, Lucifer's... ex, I guess. This is my husband, Rick.

“We were wondering if you'd... been looking for anybody recently.”

_Candy_. Lucifer had sprung that one on her after he'd taken off from the hospital where she was recovering from being poisoned by a maniac. Months with no fucking word, and then he “pops 'round” with a bimbo wife and a stupid grin. She wanted to _kill_ the asshole!!

But 'Candy' was not what she seemed. Apparently, the woman was a professional singer who owned a small nightclub in 'Vegas. Chloe's civilian consultant had hired her to play the role of his (temporary) wife in order to distract his homicidal maternal parent from erasing one Chloe Decker from existence.

It had been all very confusing, especially the part about the attorney Charlotte Richards being Lucifer's stepmother until she was hit on the head (?) and now couldn't remember her ass from an alligator (Ella's definition of amnesia) about that particular chunk of her life. Hoo, boy.

But with what Chloe now knew about her partner, his parentage and step-parentage was beginning to make more sense. But it _didn't_ help explain what the ex was doing at her front door.

The detective surmised that she wasn't going to detect the answer to that pressing question unless she invited her guests inside, and settled 'Candy' on the couch next to her husband's chair, putting drinks in their hands and turning off the TV. Her favorite sitcom would just have to get along without her for tonight.

“You asked if I was missing someone...” Her voice cracked. It had been two weeks, and not a word, not a note, nothing. Poof!! The jerk vanished into thin air, just like last time. Gonna _kill him_ , gonna...

...cry. Chloe buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking. Candy's husband, Rick, handed her a rumpled Kleenex and the couple settled in to wait. They seemed a little too familiar with other people's suffering... Had he...?

“I can't torture you. Lucifer has been with us,” she said. “We've been babysitting him for two weeks, and we want our couch back, even if his cooking has been phenomenal. Chloe, I can't fit in my dresses and I'm performing while covering the gap with _shawls_ because my costumes won't zip! The poor guy spends his time either cooking for us, staring out the window or watching soap operas, for gawd's sake! It's rotting his brain.

“ _Please!_ Come get him!!”

_...wait, what?_

“Lucifer is... in Vegas?”

Rick took over. “He showed up one night, looking pretty rough. He drank himself under the table, and we were worried about him so we took him home. He was good to us years ago, when we were afraid we'd lose the club.”

These were actually nice people. Candy's real name was Madison Leary, and she was Julliard-trained in voice and acting. Rick had broken his back in a diving accident (he described it as a “hold mah beer and watch this!” moment gone bad) and turned to the piano as an outlet for adolescent energy. The couple met at Julliard, and pooled their inheritances to buy the club, with the goal of making a name for themselves as performers. Lucifer came along as an investor 'angel' who received a share of the profits and the short-term benefit of Madison's acting talent.

“I'll tell you what...” Madison said after her second drink. “That mother of his was a piece of work! I would _not_ want that lady angry at me. She'd be a cool friend, but one you'd always have to watch your back around.”

Rick agreed. “From what he's told us, Lucifer had a hellish childhood.”

… _if you only knew,_ Chloe thought.

“I really feel for the guy – a father who thinks he's god and that _mother_...”

She couldn't share what she knew. It was still a struggle to put everything he'd told her over the years into this new context as the literal, actual truth. To have to explain to others that he wasn't kidding, that he was exactly who he said he was... Oh, _Lucifer_.

_What have I done?_

“It's my fault," Chloe admitted. "He's in a bad way because of something I said, and I don't think he'll want to see me. I hurt him too much; didn't mean to, he surprised me... no, it was more than surprise.

“Can... sorry, _Madison_ , he shocked the living shit out of me! We'd just been shot at, and he got me out of there while people were still trying to kill us. I'm not making excuses; I handled it badly. The timing was off and I was unprepared for what he was going to do.”

Madison/Candy laughed. Laughed? The sound shocked the detective, but the woman's face was cheerful rather than bitter or vindictive. “Honey, that means you're human. We do this to each other all the time. We hurt each other and don't mean to, but we're not always ready for what life throws at us.

“If the person is worth loving, we work it out. We talk, and sometimes, yeah, we cry. _Or_ laugh.”

“ _Both!_ And at the same time.” Rick said.

“Exactly. And we go on together, because the person is worth the pain. Life is worse without them than with them. And I promise this isn't turning into a lecture.

“That's all I got.”

_Was_ he worth it? Worth the pain, the horror, the fear? Or was she letting... what had Linda called it, a _comic book?_ define how she thought about him? He was _Lucifer_. Being the Devil was his _job_ , not who he was. She was Chloe Decker, not The Detective.

She'd been miserable with him gone. The department forced her to take two weeks off with pay because she'd been “impacted by a perpetrator's assault” and the union had demanded it. So she sat home, time on her hands, and thought about what she'd seen and what it meant. Long conversations with Linda helped; the doctor's “introduction” into the celestial community had been equally traumatic, if not with quite the same emotional impact.

During that time, Chloe held her phone like a lovesick teenage girl waiting for “his” call, then grew disgusted with herself, stuffed the phone in her purse and locked that in the back of her closet.

Only to frantically pull it back out again an hour later.

No call.

Not a word for _two damn weeks_ , then Madison and her husband appeared at her door and the world magically opened up again. The light dawned. Her Lightbringer was alive and reachable!

“What should I do? What if he doesn't want me back?”

The couple shared a look. “If he turns you down, sends you away, is the embarrassment worth the gamble that your lives might change for the better if he doesn't?” Rick asked.

“It's gonna hurt, and hurt bad if he gives up on you,” Madison injected.

“But, like Rick said, if he _doesn't?_ If he's glad to see you and whatever happened can be put behind you? Then the two of you are that much stronger together.

“You can't wait this one out and have it end well. You'll have to gamble, but at least it'll be in Las Vegas!”

Madison headed for the bathroom while Rick helped Chloe straighten the living area. “We're staying at the Holiday Inn and heading back to 'Vegas tomorrow. Madison has tomorrow night off, but Lucifer's at the club every evening, drinking himself senseless. She's planned a special show if you'll be there; give yourself time to decide.

“And have pity on our couch, I beg you!”

  


***********************

  


Now, here she was, Madison and Rick heading into the bar for an unannounced show and Detective Chloe Decker being towed along in their wake. With Rick on the piano, Madison had a special program planned that would be silently dedicated to a certain angel who had helped them save the club... and might just save one lonely detective, as well.

The couple seated her in a dark corner that was untouched by the stage lights and pointed out their couch-surfer. It wasn't necessary; she would have spotted Lucifer Morningstar in an overfilled coliseum. But this was a rough, sorry Lucifer. His wrinkled jacket was thrown over the back of his chair, he hadn't shaved in days, his hair needed combing, and were those sweat stains under his arms? She peered closer; yep, that shirt had been in use far too long. This was not the immaculate, well-dressed Lucifer she was accustomed to seeing. He looked... dissipated. Broken. She could see dark circles under his eyes and his expression was forbidding. The tables around him were empty.

Oh, this was not good. What had she done?

A waitress brought her drink accompanied by a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “We're counting on you,” she whispered.

_Thanks, honey,_ Chloe thought. _Let's make this a little more difficult than it already is._

The lights dimmed and a spotlight came up on Madison, who was dressed casually in jeans and a sweater. “We're giving our off-night guests a small perk just for being here,” she announced. “Rick and I have been working on a couple of new songs and we decided to try them out on you. Let us know if you like what we've done.”

Lucifer crossed his legs … _he's always had those long legs_ , Chloe mused, and leaned back in his chair.

“Dancing is encouraged,” Rick said into his microphone and opened with a jazzy riff.

  


************************

  


The first song was an old ballad re-scored for a minor key with jazz phrasing. The couple gave it their own interpretation and the detective got lost in the rhythm. The audience clapped enthusiastically (all eleven of them) when the last chord died away, and Chloe grabbed one final swallow from her drink before getting to her feet. Madison hadn't let her hear the song first, just told her that the second piece was her cue. The elevator in her stomach dropped and her skin went cold and hot at the same time.

  


_Love me_  
Or leave it be  
Oh, hold me close  
Or let it go  
  


Her feet carried her to the man who was so much more than a man, and she put a shaking hand on his shoulder. He started, and looked up at her, bleary-eyed and gaunt.

“Dance with me, Mr. Morningstar?”

  


_To die  
Or try to disappear_

_New York, New York_  
It's a wonderful town  
Oh, the Bronx is up, yeah  
But I'm falling down  
While you, you go racing around.  
  


Drunk he may have been, but he was light on his feet and swung her smoothly onto the floor. His eyes – wounded and defensive -- never left her face.

  


_I'm not another wish_  
On some hot summer night  
It all come down to this  
I'm hiding in plain sight  
  
  


She stepped into the curve of his arm and locked her stare with his. “Morningstar, what the _fuck_ are you doing? You left me. _Again!_ What were you thinking?”

She was angry _...where did that come from?_ at the man who wouldn't stay and fight it out, who wouldn't demand an answer and apologies from her when she behaved like an ass.

  


_So thrill me_  
Or kill it off  
  


“Detective!” It was the first word his lips had said to her in two weeks. “As I recall...” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “As I recall, you were... _disturbed_ by my presence. I thought it better to stay out of your life until you could regain your equilibrium.”

  


_You give me everything I need_  
Or nothing at all  
  


“I blew it,” she whispered, and he leaned closer to hear. His body odor filled her head, but she was aroused rather than repulsed. Lucifer smelled of stress-sweat with his musky undertone she'd recognize anywhere. She wanted to bury her face against his neck and breath him in. “I was _wrong_. I'd just been shot and had the wind knocked out of me, but... yeah. I'm sorry. I screwed up. I'm _so sorry,_ Lucifer. But I'm a _human_ , we do this and I'm gonna screw up again and again. And sometimes, it'll hurt you, and you'll hurt me.

“But if we're going to have any kind of a life together, I can't go chasing around the country after you every damn time I hurt your feelings! You're gonna have to stick around so we can work it out.”

  


_I'm not another lie_  
Hoping to be true  
My body and my blood  
They both arise from you  
  


“Detective, what did you just say?”

“You're gonna have to stay...?”

“No, before that. Something about having a life...”

She swallowed. Here it was. “If we're going to have any kind of a life together; that's what I said.”

“Did you mean it?”

She took his face in her hands and stopped moving with the steps his body was taking. “I meant it, Lucifer. If we have a future with each other, you have to promise me _on your unbreakable word_ that you won't go running off when it gets rough. You stay and argue with me, we fight and we work it out. _Together_.

“Can you do that, or do you want me to go home alone?”

There it was. Ball's in your court, _partner_. She held her breath.

  


_You shed no tears when I begin_  
My recitation of your sins  
I hear the ticking of your clock  
You wanna run I wanna walk  
  


Now, his hands were on her face and his darkest brown eyes were boring into her blue ones. His lips moved but no words came out.

_...dad, if you're there..._

  


_Slow, steady_  
Get ready to rock  & roll all night  
  


“I'm afraid.”

_Did he just say that?_ “Of what, Lucifer?”

“Afraid of... _you_. Of what you can do to me. Humans can't harm angels...”

  


_I'm not a rumor_  
I'm not in love  
  


“... but you can end me. I thought you had.”

She stared at his perfect face and imagined the horror that had replaced it earlier. That horror was still in there somewhere and could erupt at any second. Was she brave enough to risk that side of him? Could she ever get used to what he was?

“I looked you up on the internet. You're an immortal. I'm a human. I'm going to die in about 50 years, and there's nothing we can do about it. Can you cope with that?”

  


_I'm just the future you are never thinking of_  
  


“Detective,” he said, and his voice was that of the man she'd come to love and did not wish to live without. “I guess I'll have to, won't I?”

  


_Here now_  
Forever somehow  
  


She nodded. “ _We'll_ have to. Somehow. I said once that you weren't the Devil to me.

“You still aren't. You never will be.”

  


_This angry heart_

_  
This angry heart_

_  
This angry heart_

  


***************

  


I was halfway through the song when I knew we had our couch back. _Love_. We think we're so powerful, so intelligent, so _rational_ but we're dealing with that vulnerable organ that drops us to our knees when we least expect it.

Lucifer loved his mother. His mother loved him. But he had to hire me to play the role of his bimbo wife to get that woman to leave Chloe alone. Lucifer loves Chloe. She loves him. They've managed to dance around their feelings for years and in the process hammer each other into the ground. Pull back to keep your heart from being bruised, and you'll trip over your own feet and dump your ass on the floor without any help from the love of your life.

I watched them out there on our dance floor. He'll be back to himself in a week, she'll be out investigating murders, and I think they'll be tighter and stronger together in spite of whatever it was that caused this mess in the first place. Couldn't have been _too_ terrible; Lucifer's one of the good guys and Chloe seems like a neat lady.

When I'm done airing out our couch, I'm buying myself that 'Stevie Nicks' velvet dress with the beaded shawl I saw at the Palazzo's boutique. Lucifer paid us while he was couch-surfing, and wouldn't let us refuse his money. I'm embarrassed to have taken it but, hey, it's damned difficult to win an argument with that man.

And with his cooking, I've packed on more pounds than I'm happy about in only two weeks, so now my costumes don't fit.

I'll tell Rick the devil made me buy that dress. He'll get a laugh out of it.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Madison covered is 'New York, 2015', performed by Elizabeth Gillies on the FX show Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. It's available on itunes, and I recommend it highly as a ballad for lovers – it was the inspiration for this story.


End file.
